Barbell Shrugged

In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, Doug Larson and Travis Mash officially welcome Dr. Mike Lane as the show's new co-host. Mike shares his full origin story, from growing up a sports-loving kid in St. Louis, to discovering strength and conditioning in college, to earning his PhD and becoming a professor of exercise physiology. Along the way, he reflects on the mentors who shaped his thinking, including time spent around Westside Barbell, Olympic lifting culture, and elite academic labs that blended hard training with hard science. The conversation dives deep into the intersection of real-world performance and research. Mike breaks down his work with tactical populations like firefighters and law enforcement, explaining why traditional fitness tests often fail to reflect the actual demands of the job. They explore load carriage, heat stress, aerobic capacity, and why durability, not just raw fitness, determines success in high-stakes environments. Finally, Mike opens up about his own competitive journey across powerlifting, strongman, Olympic lifting, and Highland Games. From pulling 750+ pounds in competition to learning hard lessons about longevity, ego, and smart training, this episode captures what it looks like to stay strong, curious, and competitive into your 40s. With Mike Lane stepping into the co-host role, Barbell Shrugged enters a new chapter, one grounded in experience, science, and a deep respect for the iron game. Links: Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

In this episode, Dr. Karen Esser Professor and Chair of the Department of Physiology and Aging at the University of Florida joins the crew to break down one of the most overlooked performance variables in human physiology: circadian timing. After a career spent studying muscle adaptation, Dr. Esser shifted her research toward the molecular clocks inside our tissues, uncovering how every cell in the body keeps its own time. She explains how these clocks govern fuel storage, protein repair, metabolic readiness, and ultimately the way muscle responds to training. The team digs into what these clocks do, how they synchronize, and why misalignment affects everything from daily performance to long-term health. The conversation dives deep into time-of-day effects on strength, endurance, and adaptation. Dr. Esser highlights that humans are consistently stronger and more explosive in the afternoon, a pattern reflected in Olympic records and decades of performance data. But her lab's animal research reveals something game changing: consistent morning training can shift the internal clock system, allowing morning athletes to achieve equal or even better adaptations after several weeks, despite using lower absolute training loads. She also explains how travel, jet lag, and mistimed eating disrupt organ specific clocks, reducing performance and creating metabolic consequences similar to pre-diabetes. The crew tests these ideas against real world training habits, coaching experience, and what happens when athletes switch from evening to early morning training. Finally, Dr. Esser unpacks the broader health implications of circadian disruption from increased risk of metabolic disease and cardiovascular dysfunction to higher rates of depression and cancer in chronically misaligned shift workers. She outlines simple, actionable strategies: anchor your sleep and training times, keep eating within a roughly 10 hour window, avoid late night calories, and arrive early when competing across time zones. The conversation closes with practical takeaways for athletes, coaches, and everyday lifters who want to maximize adaptation, improve metabolic health, and align their biology with the rhythms built into every cell. Links: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

In this episode, Dr. Bill Campbell returns to the show to discuss a major pivot in his research from building muscle and optimizing fat loss to understanding menopause and its effects on women's body composition. After watching his wife struggle through a severe perimenopause transition that resisted every traditional fat loss strategy, Campbell uncovered a massive blind spot in the scientific literature: almost no research exists on fit, resistance trained women going through menopause. His public comments sparked hundreds of messages from women describing the same struggles including unexplained weight gain, muscle loss, energy crashes, and sleep disruption highlighting how poorly understood this phase of life truly is. Dr. Campbell breaks down what the best research does show. Menopause accelerates fat gain, shifts fat distribution toward the midsection, and produces measurable declines in muscle and bone mineral density. Many women experience weight loss resistance where standard diet and training approaches no longer produce results. He also digs into the nuance of hormone replacement therapy how progesterone and estrogen can dramatically improve sleep, anxiety, and energy, why estrogen appears anabolic for middle aged women, and why HRT's effect on body fat varies widely. Campbell clarifies the long standing confusion created by the 2002 Women's Health Initiative study, how its flawed interpretation suppressed HRT use for two decades, and why today's evidence supports earlier intervention under an evidence based physician. The conversation closes with clear, practical guidance for women entering perimenopause. Maintain a consistent fitness lifestyle, lift weights to protect muscle and bone, prioritize sleep, get annual bloodwork and DEXA scans, and consider HRT early if medically appropriate. Campbell emphasizes that lifestyle habits do not replace hormone therapy and hormone therapy does not replace lifestyle. Together they help women navigate the most dramatic physiological transition since puberty. Whether you're a coach, practitioner, or someone approaching this stage of life, this episode provides a much needed framework for understanding, preparing for, and managing menopause with strength and agency. Links: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Former Marine and general contractor Andrew Kavanaugh joins the crew to share the origin story of Black Root Recovery, a company he founded after watching too many of his fellow Marines struggle physically, mentally, and emotionally after returning home. What started as a personal quest to rebuild his health led to a 90-pound weight loss, the elimination of sleep apnea and nightmares, and a profound shift in cognitive clarity and emotional resilience. Andrew combined the modalities that changed his own life (grounding, infrared therapy, red-light therapy, and traditional sauna heat) into a single premium, custom-built recovery system designed to reduce inflammation, support brain health, and help veterans and high performers reclaim their capability. Andrew breaks down the science and practical application behind each component of the system, including his patented grounding design that connects the user directly to an eight-foot copper ground rod to immediately reduce blood viscosity and "electrical noise" in the body. Paired with deep-penetrating red light panels, infrared heat, and a high-output traditional sauna, his units create a stacked recovery environment that improves circulation, reduces inflammation, accelerates healing, and enhances cognitive performance. Andrew shares how, after three months of daily use, he saw his social anxiety disappear, his brain function sharpen, and his jiu-jitsu endurance skyrocket. The conversation expands into the broader mission: supporting veterans, giving athletes a competitive performance advantage, and scaling access to recovery tools that have historically been too expensive or too fragmented to deliver real transformation. Andrew discusses future plans to build custom installations for gyms and sports teams, and continue refining the multimodal system. Whether the goal is longevity, recovery, or helping those who have served, this episode reveals why integrated recovery environments may become the next frontier in reducing inflammation, healing trauma, and elevating human potential. Links: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram  

In this episode, the world's #1 pickleball player, Ben Johns, joins Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Travis Mash, and Dr. Mike Lane to unpack what it really takes to stay at the top of one of the fastest-growing sports on the planet. Ben walks through the insane travel schedule, the perpetual in-season demands, and the growing physical toll of a sport played in deep athletic stances, high-velocity lateral movements, and multi-hour tournament days. For the past year, Ben has partnered with RAPID Health Optimization to build a data-driven system around sleep, recovery, hydration, nutrition, and personalized strength and conditioning giving him a competitive edge in a sport where consistency and longevity are becoming just as important as pure skill. The team breaks down how RAPID reverse-engineered the physiology of pickleball by analyzing metabolic demands, movement patterns, travel stress, and tournament structure. Ben shares what has changed the most: HRV-driven sleep routines, hydration and electrolyte protocols, rapid-turnaround nutrition systems during six-day competition blocks, and gym programming that prioritizes leg strength, acceleration, deceleration, rotational power, and the ability to repeatedly produce peak output with minimal fatigue. With only an eight-week "off-season" each year, Ben's entire training plan now revolves around precision dosing of fatigue, auto-regulation, and strategic recovery backed by data from Oura, lab analysis (blood, stool, saliva, urine) and the RAPID coaching team. Finally, the conversation moves into the strategic side of dominance: pattern recognition, the metagame of adjustments, and the ability to keep learning in a young sport where the rules of mastery are still being written. Ben explains how having a full-stack performance team allows him to focus on playing, developing new skills, and outlasting opponents who aren't managing sleep, travel, workload, or recovery with the same level of precision. If you want an inside look at how the best player in the world trains, prepares, and stays healthy and how RAPID Health Optimization builds elite longevity systems for professional athletes this episode is a must-listen. Links: Ben Johns on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram